Gardens For Rent!

It is time to rent a plot for the 2013 growing season! Register by filling out the online form found on the CCG Registration tab at the top of this web page. Or call Sarah: 503-653-0015 to have a printed registration form mailed to you.

4 ft x 12 ft plots $30

10 ft x 10 ft plots $40

10 ft x 20 ft plots $55

In addition to paying the yearly rent, gardeners are expected to help with maintaining garden common areas, participating in garden projects and otherwise contribute to our gardening community.

New to growing veggies? Don’t worry, a community garden is a great place to learn!

Not sure what size plot to rent? The bigger the plot, the bigger the time commitment needed when planting, tending, and harvesting.

Feel free to call Sarah with questions: 503-653-0015

Campbell Garden veggies harvested for donation on October 4th, 2012

End of the Season Update?

There is no such thing as an "end of the season" at Campbell Community Garden! We are growing year round!

The last update to this website was in late August, not because we haven't had anything to report, but because we have been busy harvesting and planning/planting for winter and spring. Over the next few weeks we will be making updates to the site, including a new page about the Campbell Garden Harvest Sharing Program (we have donated over 800 pounds of veggies this year), and updated info on garden sponsors and supporters, and we will open registration for garden plots for the 2013 growing season.


Campbell Community Garden, October 2012



Growing like crazy!

The Campbell Community Garden is in full veggie production now! We are busy harvesting as well as planning for our fall and winter gardens.

Campbell Community Garden Harvest Sharing beds; our herb bed is in front, with tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant behind; out of view are cucumbers, squash, leeks, beans, and more!

The Campbell Garden Harvest Sharing Program has been great for our gardeners who are on vacation or otherwise not able to harvest their veggies. Between vacationing gardeners and our dedicated donation gardens, we are donating 60 pounds of veggies a week.

Produce donated on August 20th includes summer squash, cucumbers, dill, thyme, basil, parsley, leeks, eggplant, a few tomatoes and peppers, kale & chard.

It is amazing how quickly the summer squash and cucumbers grow!  What to do with out of control zucchini? See the video from Mavis at  One Hundred Dollars a Month:


As soon as it is time to rip out the squash and cucumber plants, we will have new things to plant in their places. We intend to grow year round in the Campbell Garden.

Seedlings of kale, chard, cabbage and basil

Improve your garden and help raise funds for Campbell Garden

Dean Innovations Finer Outdoor Living is helping Campbell Community Garden raise money to build our shed and purchase garden tools  by donating one dollar for every yard of Premium Soil Blend sold in August (up to $500!).

Call Dean Innovations today at 503-281-1637 and and mention the
GIVE BACK Special to help Campbell Community Garden reach our goal. Here is a link with more information, and a thermometer that shows our fundraising progress: Dean Innovations Community Giveback.

Premium Portland Soil Blend

Premium Portland Soil Blend is well suited for mixing 50/50 into your existing garden soils to create beautiful, nutritious, well drained planting berms or vegetable beds. You will also get excellent results using this for raised beds, new turf, and plant hole amendments for shrubs and trees.

While one might not think of starting a new garden bed in August, it is actually a perfect time to do so:

• Fall and winter maturing vegetables like kale, lettuce, and broccoli need to be planted now.
• Garlic & onions for next summers harvest need to be planted in October
• Building and improving shrub and perennial beds now will mean they are ready for fall planting.
• $1 of every yard of Premium Soil Blend will go to Campbell Community Garden!

So, if you have considered adding more growing space in your yard, maybe for a bigger patch of tomatoes next year, or for more shrubs for privacy, now is the time to do it!

First Harvest Donation of the 2012 Growing Season

We delivered our first produce donation today! It was a small one, just 7.3 pounds, but everything looked delicious!

Rainbow radish, Stupice tomato, Magda squash, and Zucchini (clockwise)

We donated rainbow radishes, Magda summer squash, basil, and 4 little tomatoes from our harvest sharing plots. Gardeners contributed  lettuce, kale, red radishes, and green zucchini from their own plots.

A big thanks to the Campbell Community Garden donation plot sponsors, Tempus Dictum Inc. and Badbeard Microroastery for their cash sponsorship of the plots. And thanks to Hansen Family Farm for their donation of tomato and eggplant plants.

Tuscan kale, green leaf lettuce, and Red Russian kale (clockwise)

Thanks to the gardeners who shared produce, and for our garden volunteers who helped last night with planting basil, parsley, and radish, bean, and beet seeds.

Training Tomato Plants

Our tomato plants have really appreciated the recent warm weather and are starting to really grow and flower, a few even have small fruit. Tomatoes left to grow on their own tend to vine and sprawl all over the ground. Taking the time to train them to grow up onto a structure of some kind will reward us with healthier plants with fruit that can be easier to pick. Campbell Gardeners are employing several different methods of training their plants.

Traditional style tomato cages in yellow and red complement the marigolds for a pretty combination...imagine red ripe fruit in this colorful  mix!

One of our Square Foot Gardeners is trellising their tomatoes on netting and PVC pipe.

This gardener decided to try out a combination of metal T-posts and wire after figuring out the cost to outfit his large number of plants with traditional cages...I think we could name his system a "Tomato Corral"

This gardener isn't growing tomatoes sideways, it just looks that way. They are staking their plants to wood stakes and are using old pantyhose and pipe cleaners to keep them in line.

This gardener is using stakes and twine to make a cross between a cage and a trellis.

This gardener found a very attractive solution to tomato cages that want to topple over. They enclosed the cages in bamboo tee pees.

For detailed instructions on how to prune and train tomato plants, see the two videos below.
Here is a video from the University of Main Extension Service that show how to stake indeterminate tomatoes:



Here is a link  from Fine Gardening Magazine on pruning and trellising tomatoes.

Thank You!

The grand opening tomato planting party was a success! No rain, a little sun, and 28 tomato plants, plus cucumber, watermelon, and summer squash all planted in our harvest donation beds.

The grand opening was well attended, and it didn't rain!

THANK YOU to all of the gardenrs who spent time getting Campbell Community Garden ready for it's public debut. It is very rewardign to see how much our garden has grown since we started planting on June 1st.

THANK YOU to all of our garden sponsors, donors, and supporters. Your help made the building of the garden possible. Your contributions have gone far to improve our neighborhood and community.

Garden supporters help plant tomatoes. L-R: Milwaukie City Manager, Bill Monahan; CCG Gardener, Judy Kiepke; North Clackamas School District Assistant Supperintendant, Ron Stewart; Landscape East & West's, Cindy Capparelli; and Milwaukie Community Services Director, JoAnn Herrigel.